Goodfellas

 

            I watched Scorcese's Goodfellas in a Fairbanks Alaska movie theater just a few weeks after I got the hell out the city after Hussein took over Kuwait 's oil fields.   I thought the draft was coming back then so I figured Alaska was real close to Canada and all.   Though I worked in the heart of Philadelphia 's Italian Market, I didn't watch the Godfather til years after I was out of there.  

            Roger Ebert put it this way roughly: it's not so much a plot driven movie as it is about the life of a gangster.   Another reading of the film is that it's not so much a plot driven piece as it is a film about life inside of an organization, the “O” in RICO.   It's one of the reasons we love gangster films so much—the modern audience member has more in common with the modern gangster than he or she has with the modern cop.   After watching Goodfellas for about half an hour, I realized that Scorcese had drawn me into his world.   I was so drawn cause I could relate—I grew up amongst another organization, the Philadelphia Police Force.   Like Mrs. Hill says somewhere toward the end of the first act: no outsiders at any vacations or weddings or anything.   The insular generally uneducated batch of urban folk who, outside of vacations to the shore and florida , never even venture into Manhattan .   Brooklyn is the world.   These blue collar mafia don't even know people anywhere else in the country really.   And they beat and stab each other like those apes from the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey.   I could relate.   Other side, same world.   Lots of the same rules: no outsiders and beat on each other like animals.   Goodfellas is one of those films that reminded me as I sat there as to what film is all about.   Entertainment and truth.   Use fantasy to bring us truth we ask of Hollywood .